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A Date with Dinosaurs
Nevada, Mo. -- On Tuesday, Jan. 13, The Nevada Public Library hosted A Date With Dinosaurs. There were about two dozen children, ranging from stroller age to 13 or so, and at least a dozen adults present to see the dinosaur version of the Nature Reach Program put on by Delia Lister of The Pittsburg State University Biology Department.
When she is not teaching at the university, Lister does several programs a week in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. She was in Nevada at the request of Martha Bledsoe the children's librarian. She has been here before and "always does a wonderful job for us," said Bledsoe.
Though she doesn't often do dinosaur presentations, Lister was glad to be here. She said, "Our showcase program is the raptor program, but kids just love dinosaurs, so I enjoy teaching them a little about them." Lister brought a table full of items with her to show the children, plus a couple of live animals.
She began her program by trying to give the kids an idea of the time spans involved. She used a string showing man at the beginning of it and other events in time spaced along the string as it unrolled. She went on to show a deer antler and a turtle shell and ask if they were fossils. The children weren't fooled.
She showed them a piece of amber with an insect in it and told them that it wasn't a dinosaur but it was a real fossil. She had a piece of fossilized plant matter the size of a man's arm. She let the children pass some of the items around and just touch others. It was a very interactive presentation, and she did a great job of getting the children involved and keeping them in check.
No one cried, threw a fit, started a fight or got into trouble; they were all well behaved, inquisitive and surprisingly knowledgeable. There were plenty of oohs and aahs, and even a yuk or two when Lister showed them some fossilized dung. The children were especially interested when some of the larger fossils were shown. A giant sloth's toe and a mastodon tooth, both nearly as large as a loaf of bread, certainly looked like dinosaur fossils, but it didn't seem to bother the children that they weren't.
Lister also had a number of fossil replicas with her as well as some insect species, dead of course, including a small millipede. She told the kids that way back when, the millipede would have been 6 feet long and that dragon flies had wingspans 2 feet across. She told them about a flying reptile that weighed 190 pounds; the largest creature to ever soar above the earth.
Throughout her presentation, Lister asked the children questions and referred to movies like "Jurassic Park," "The Land Before Time" and "Ice Age."
Their familiarity with those movies and their characters kept them interested. Many of the children were familiar with what a shark's tooth looked like, but had never seen one from a species known as Megalodon, which had a mouth big enough to swallow a full grown moose and teeth as big as a man's hand.
She eventually brought out a living example of what a dinosaur may have looked like. She showed the children a Bearded Dragon, a reptile native to Australia. She used it because it has protective spikes and some of the other traits of dinosaurs.
Finally, the kids got to see and touch a real dinosaur fossil. A spoon shaped tooth of a large herbivore was passed around and everyone got to touch part of a femur bone the size of a cantaloupe. A plastic Triceratops and Stegosaurus served as examples of dinosaurs with protective spikes or armor. A fossilized dinosaur egg and teeth from a Tyrannosaurus Rex were also shown.
Near the end of her presentation, Lister let all of the children touch a replica of a well-known species.
However, there are only five known specimens of Archaeopteryx, the first dinosaur that began to grow feathers. The discovery of this fossil is the reason many experts believe that birds are the closest living descendants of dinosaurs. She also showed the kids an example of an Oviraptor.
Lister brought out "Dodger" an American Kestrel, or Sparrow Hawk as it is commonly called, as an example of modern day raptors. She compared its talons to those of the Velociraptor of movie fame and let all of the children take a good look at him while she told them that he was rescued as a baby after getting his foot caught in a picnic table. After fielding a few questions about Dodger, Lister and her assistant Sarah Chenoweth began packing for the trip home.
Van Celaya, 13, of Nevada kept the attention of the audience for a few moments longer as he showed everyone the fossils he began collecting when he was 3 years old. Among his collection was a tooth and some bone. Young Draven Hancock of Nevada said he "liked the bones, because without bones we couldn't stand up."
There was a flurry of activity and chatter as everyone prepared to leave, and Bledsoe thought the event was a success, saying, "I think anytime kids walk through the door of the library it's a success."